Hunter Valley-based McGuigan Wines has released the second expression of its super-premium wine, The Philosophy.
Initially launching the 2010 vintage last year, the new 2012 release of The Philosophy has continued to have a ripple effect of improvement across the entire McGuigan Wines portfolio, according to chief winemaker Neil McGuigan.
“When I came back to the business in 2004 I asked our senior winemaker, ‘How hard is it to make a $10 bottle of wine?’” he said “He told me that, with all the gear we had, it wasn’t hard at all, and I said, ‘That’s the problem’, and I told him that I wanted to make a $150 bottle of wine.
“That’s not something that you just decide to do one day. To do that, you have to have all the standard operating procedures, the people, the processes and the passion every day. Then you put some outstanding fruit through and you have the possibility of making a $150 bottle of wine. And that’s what we’ve done.”
By having “that attitude and having that excellence coming into your winemaking, you lift the bar on everything that you do”, Mr McGuigan said.
“So, all of a sudden, your $10 bottle of wine starts to taste like a $12 bottle of wine – you start to over deliver,” he said. “And that excellence in winemaking has now gone through the whole business: it started with the wine and now all divisions have excellence as their criteria. That’s why Philosophy has been so important to us. It has lifted the bar.”
The 2012 Philosophy is available now with an RRP of $150 from fine-wine retailers.
